re: Vandy cancels classes..

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That's mostly scare mongering, AggnHou, let's look again.

Mortality Rate From Drinking Nasty Mexican Corona Beer

Nobody had ever seen the coronavirus that causes the disease known as COVID-19 before the current outbreak began in China in December 2019. So for context, it is often compared to a symptomatically similar disease we know well: the seasonal flu, which infects many people each year but kills only about 0.1% of them on average.

Many people were alarmed, then, when the World Health Organization announced in March that COVID-19 has killed 3.4% of the people who have caught it so far—a mortality rate far higher than not only the seasonal flu, but also higher than earlier COVID-19 mortality estimates, which were around 2%.

That estimate may say more about the inherent uncertainty in making these sorts of calculations during an evolving outbreak than it does about the true deadliness of COVID-19.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak began to pick up steam in China in January, experts have been scrambling to get a handle on the disease and the way it behaves. But they have also warned that estimates are not exact, and that numbers are likely to shift over time. One key reason: people with milder versions of the illness are underrepresented in official case counts, since they may not be sick enough to seek medical attention or realize they have anything more than a cold. Some people, research now suggests, may get infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, without showing any symptoms at all.

That means the total number of reported cases is very likely an underestimate—and by not counting many mild or asymptomatic cases, we’re likely overestimating the disease’s overall mortality rate. President Donald Trump, for one, told Fox News he has a “hunch” that the actual mortality rate is likely below 1%.

Looking at data from countries with robust testing systems does support the idea that the disease’s mortality rate may be lower than 3.4%. Countries that have tested significant numbers of people are generally reporting lower mortality rates than those, like the U.S., that have tested in far lower numbers and with a stronger focus on severe cases. This suggests that when testing networks are broadened to catch people with less serious illnesses, and case counts then reflect this range of severity, mortality rates go down.

The mortality rate in South Korea, where more than 1,100 tests have been administered per million residents, comes out to just 0.6%, for example. In the U.S., where only seven tests have been administered per million residents, the mortality rate is above 5%.